Urândia Aragão

Artigo 19

photo: Bruno Simão

When we sense strangeness in the encounter with the other, something is revealed, beyond treaties, conventions, expectations, and personal conflicts. What is said and what remains unsaid is part of the construction of an image of ourselves for the other. From this arise the expectations that move us in a dialectic of illusions, of fiction and reality. The masks, that can as easily serve us as they can oppress us, are called into question. This is the moment that we choose to keep them or to let them go. Is it in this letting go that we experience something close to a state of consciousness and freedom? In the world of formal language, declarations try to protect us from fear, but they say little about this place and time between 'I and Thou', about the matter we are made of and its intelligence beyond rationality. Starting from research on human rights, Artigo 19 seeks to reflect on the relationship between the speakable and the unspeakable.